


Roses in Vancouver

by athousandwinds



Category: Pat of Silver Bush Series - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: F/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-21
Updated: 2011-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of Pat, and places left behind her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses in Vancouver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sarah_Frost](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sarah_Frost).



"We might have roses this year," said Pat, taking her scissors and snipping a thread from her embroidery. "I planted the seeds last May, by the south fence. It would be so lovely to have roses for my birthday," she added wistfully, for it had been autumn damasks she had planted. They were gloriously-coloured, darker than most pink roses, and, for flowers, robust. But roses were so fragile anyway.

It was light in the evenings now, and Pat had begun to hunt out some of Hilary's old shirts for the purpose of hooking a new rug for the parlour. It had not been easy. Hilary, he explained, had been given to doing everything for himself, including buying clothes with his own money, rather than his mother's, and washing them, too.

"And what with one thing and another, it was just easier to buy all the shirts plain white and the trousers plain black," he said. Pat retorted that that was why she would be buying them from now on. Hilary acquiesced, not really minding. And, Pat enlightened him, one _couldn't_ have a rug made from only white and black - "Why, one would be forever cleaning it," she said. She would have gladly used her own old dresses, only they had all burnt with Silver Bush.

May Binnie - Pat could not and would not think of her as May Gardiner - had sweetly offered her blue poplin up for the scissors, but Pat had declined, just as sweetly and inwardly seething. Sid had counted himself lucky that he was not expected to give an opinion.

She was trying not to feel as if her visit home had been blighted. It hadn't been, not at all - Mother had been as dear as ever, if a little greyer, and Long Alec had sat there, looking at her as if he might not get another chance. He had wanted to give her roses for some reason - Pat did not know that Mother had carried a bouquet of wild ones at her wedding - but it had been early spring, and besides, there were none growing at Bay Shore, not yet. The house had been magnificent in the moonlight, especially driving back from Swallowfield - but Bay Shore was not, and never would be, Silver Bush. And Sid had grown a moustache! Pat did not grudge him it as she had once grudged her father his clean-shaven face, but it was disconcerting how May had developed the habit of reaching up and stroking it whenever she wanted something, as one might stroke the fur of a sleek petted cat.

"Ah," Judy would have said, "let ould Judy tell yer about Mary McDermott's pet cat. She fed it from her own plate and better than it deserved, so I tell ye. And this Mary, now, she had stars in her eyes and skin like a white peony, so the young men were sniffin' round her from the day she put her hair up. And there was this one beau, the handsomest of them all, and the whole lot of them thought he'd carry the day. But the McDermott, God-fearin' man that he was, had no use for him, and he put his foot down. Now, Mary had a head on her shoulders and she said, `I'll not be standing for that, old McDermott!', for she was his granddaughter and always got round him. But this time he said no and stuck to it, which was a sight to see, I'll tell ye. The McDermotts had the best rows in the county. Anyway, Mary McDermott'd have none of it, and so she decided her beau should carry her off in her family's teeth - ye would of liked her, Cuddles. And do you know, she got all the way to makin' her plans and arrangin' it with her beau, and then that night they was escapin' and that puss goes mad and attacks him, yowlin' all the way. He roused the whole house and her beau turned on him and shouted some things I'll not be repeatin', like, and finished up by kickin' the poor beast in the ribs. So Mary, who had that pretty head on her shoulders, gives him a look that would of frozen Heck and tells him to get out of her sight. And when that cat died, the old McDermott gave him a Christian burial."

"Oh," Pat would have said, eyes obligingly wide. "But how did the cat _know_ they were running away?"

"Wail, hare's the funny thing," Judy would have told her. "When the praste got to the Lord's Prayer and said "dayliver us from evil", there's some that'll swear from that day to this that they never heard such a howlin'. Because there's some as says that cat was the Devil himself, and some as says just another one of his minions, who saw Ivil in that beau of Mary McDermott's and didn't like the competition."

Rae would have clasped her hands with glee here. "Really?"

"There's some as say it was Mary McDermott's guardian angel," Judy would have allowed. "Old McDermott had it in his prayers ivery day. Bit I says there's niver bin a cat yet that went to Heavin - or if as there was, that cat was the first."

Sometimes Pat had the sneaking thought that that cat might have been a better sister-in-law than May Binnie, devil or no devil. But she tried to swallow it down and she was always politer than ever afterwards, no matter how provoking May was.

"I can't help but think the next time you visit, it might be for her funeral," May whispered one night as she and Sid were bidding the inhabitants of Bay Shore goodnight. Mother was reclining gracefully on the sofa - Long Alec and Pat had got up to see the guests out and insisted that she stay put - and Pat was hard-pressed not to cast a frightened glance over her shoulder. May patted her hand and her sympathy looked so genuine that Pat could barely tell whether she meant to be kind or spiteful. " _Do_ come back soon - I'm sure Hilary won't mind a bit. He's got so much work in Vancouver, doesn't he?"

Hilary did have lots of work in Vancouver, but he preferred to lug it home each day rather than stay late in his office. He was not as Long Alec had been, in and out of the house every other hour - but then, he was not a farmer and Pat couldn't expect that. It was refreshing, and not at all lonely, for how could one be lonely in their dear house?

"You should have some company," Hilary said once, a little worriedly. Pat had turned to him in surprise.

"No, no, really. Isn't the Hill of the Mist company enough for anyone?"

"Wouldn't you like to have someone with you in the day?" he asked.

"Oh! - " for Pat had realised suddenly what he meant - "Well, I will. Soon." And she had smiled at the smile in his so-serious eyes.

She had written and told the folks on the Island about it, and Mother had written back with all sorts of loving advice, as had Winnie, and Aunt Hazel.

"Whatever you do," Winnie had written in neat, copperplate script, " _don't_ call the poor thing Greta." Pat, her heart hardened against the name since childhood, fully concurred. Aunt Hazel told her to lie down and dangle her wedding ring over her tummy to find out if it would be a boy or a girl. Mother wrote that she had bought a measure of white muslin, and would Pat like it for a christening robe? Pat would, if Mother was sure she could spare it. May wanted to know if Pat's new house had a parsley bed (wouldn't that be quaint?).

Yes, it did, Pat thought darkly. We grow our own babies in Vancouver. She was rather taken aback by her vehemence.

"I think I'd like a girl," Hilary said. "A girl just like you, Pat." It was therefore Pat's duty to protest and argue that she wanted a boy just like Hilary, which she did, but secretly she wanted a little girl, too, pretty like Winnie and with Hilary's sharp brain. Of course, she'd love the Hill of the Mist - Pat would take her there on picnics and tell her Judy Plum's stories. Rae would come, too, and tell them about China, and Brook might follow along if he liked. Hilary would stroke their daughter's hair and paint castles in Spain for her of the houses he was going to build, palaces and cottages, mansions and terraces. And Pat would tell her about Silver Bush.

She had gone there, on her last visit - she hadn't been able to resist. But it wasn't there! Even the ruins of her long-loved home had been cleared away and rebuilt upon. The rosebushes had been cut down. The new house - Sid and May's house - wasn't ugly, precisely (Pat found it hard to be more generous than that; most people in the town called it handsome), but there were no memories. The fire had exorcised a hundred ghosts, fluttering like butterflies through the rooms. A house remained - but it was not Silver Bush, though it bore the name and the post office delivered mail to that address.

May had come out of the back door, and they had stood there, looking at each other. May had been trying to grow roses round the doorframe, with little success. Pat had expected baleful triumph from her - for surely May knew what she was thinking! - but May had seemed unusually contemplative.

"It _was_ a quaint old place," she'd said and Pat had gritted her teeth reflexively, "but it was dear for all that. I only wanted to shake things up a little, you know, Pat. A new stove, that was all. A lick of fresh paint on the window sashes. Not the whole house gone, just like that."

Then why did you leave the stove burning? Pat had almost asked, but she held her tongue.

"I always liked it," May had said, her fingers lightly touching the wood of her doorframe, as if she still wasn't quite sure it was really hers. "Everyone liked the Gardiners and everyone liked Silver Bush - you all were forever looking so happy." There had been something in her tone which Pat recognised from long experience of May as envy, tinged with unexpected wistfulness.

"May - " she had begun, softening her voice, but May had drawn back into the house.

"Oh, well!" she'd said, with vituperative cheerfulness. "Can't have everything. And really, this lovely place is far superior to the old one, Pat. It shan't burn down over some silly sparks."

"No," Pat had replied, feeling unaccountably as if May had simply slammed the back door in her face. The criticism of Silver Bush was doing a lot to turn her angry, rather than hurt. "I daresay it won't." Her rose stems looked weak, she thought; there were too many thorns.

All the way home she had wondered if Sid had married the May Binnie of schoolyard bullying and over-sophistication, or if he knew the quieter May of the doorframe, but she had not quite wanted to write and ask. And May would be sure to read the letter, anyway.

In the nights before she had left for the Island, she had dreamt constantly of Silver Bush; sometimes whole and healthy, sometimes a burnt-out shell, the wreck of all her hopes. Hilary had woken beside her on these white nights and tried to soothe her back to sleep. Dear Jingle! The idea of life without him made Pat give a queer shudder. But it would be worse to live with him but without his affection. Pat, for perhaps the first time in her life, hoped devoutly that May Binnie was happy.

Tonight, she was thinking of Bets. It was really a natural progression from May to Sid to Bets, if she had to justify it. As if anyone would have to justify thinking of Bets! If Pat worked very carefully, she could hook a picture of a princess into this rug and that princess would be Bets. Whenever Pat told fairy-tales to the neighbourhood children, that princess was Bets. No golden-haired damsels presided over Pat's castles, but a grey-eyed, grown-up lady with a sweet face and dark curls. Sometimes Pat missed her so much she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. Bets would have laughed so over her marriage to Jingle.

"Oh, _Pat_ ," she would have said. But perhaps, if Bets had been there, she would have brought it about earlier, or perhaps she wouldn't. Sid wouldn't have married May Binnie, and Pat would still have Silver Bush.

"Penny for your thoughts," Hilary said gently, looking up from his blueprints spread out on the floor. Pat had a hand pressed flat on her abdomen and her eyes were half-closed.

"I want to name her Elizabeth," Pat said. Hilary rose and went to sit beside her, placing his hand over hers.

"I think that would be a good idea," he said, his voice quiet. Pat laid her head against his shoulder and they stayed like that for some little while. She was thinking of roses.


End file.
